Would anyone be opposed to just opening up the tier 1 zones? The progression can still be required to access the tier 2 zones...
lol.. some don't get it... there are people who are done with making friends to play this game. And I (like some others) will rather stop playing this game than wasting inefficiently a ton of time in this game searching for groups or being oblidged to attend things. I am not 15 anymore! There is a difference between social networks and .... REAL friends. You look them in the eye and you feel, touch, smell them and tell things and don't pretend that it is the same via a MMO! Is anybody here still aware of that? I have enough friends in real life and only want to spend a bit relaxing time in a game. If I tend from time to time to search somebody from a far country to "keyboard" them (because if somebody discovered it - this is no talking!) then I will do so. But first and foremost this game is not real life and friendship for me is much much more than meeting people in computer graphics and reading their keyboard expressions. This age of "likes" and "virtual friends", of facebooks - full of wrong information - seems to blend for some completely what you have in real life and forget that there are people who want to live their life in their ways instead of shifting their whole real life into a virtual room where you never will really enjoy the energetics and joy of real faces. Wake up my friend and let people, who enjoy exactly THAT as friend live their life and play their game in the way it evolved. This mindset was 10+ years ago and much has died meanwhile! What is left is a bit relaxing time in an stoneaged game which the last thing, I want to have is - Stress - , thats it. Eat that. Sorry.. but somebody needs to say that at least once...
I raid, group, and box. I do what fits my timeline to play this game and help others, however this isn't the good ole days of pickup groups. I've completed the trials of smoke with friends, but locking content in this era of EQ isn't a good idea. Take out locked zones and this might be a decent expansion. For those who are on a terrible server or work odd hours, you're SoL.
I am more than a little disappointed the devs didn't make this expansion more appealing to everyone-solo/molo/boxers/groupers/raiders. Why in the world of waldo would you release new content that drives players away from the game? We need to attract people right? How do we make the game more appealing? I looked at the populations on all the servers and it seems a little low guys-like a lot low. We need to consider the different types of players first and foremost before we lock down, drive out and nerf the begessus out of the game for all of the remaining players that haven't left. Maybe I am wrong, but the population isn't what it use it be and that is for a reason.
Yeah there's no reason to buy it until you're max level and well geared. I'm not a raider period and 80% of the content is intended for me.
if you haven't even attempted the other RoS missions, specifically gorowyn, you're your own problem and I have no pitty for you.
If you take the time to actually play the content you end up realizing that there's MUCH more than in the last few years. for EOK and RoS, at the very least, there was basically 2-3 tasks per zone + a group mission, and then some easy little kill tasks on the side. for this expansion there's a LOT of questing involved... there's still the easy kill tasks, but there's a lot more variety in the progression stuff.
What the? Yea bud, I can imagine that maybe EQ is not a great fit for your play style. I married a woman I met in EQ. I was the best man for a buddy I met in EQ. I have built many meaningful relationships with people I met in EQ. Tons of people build life long friendships from people they meet in EQ. Congrats on your real life being so fulfilling. Maybe try a first person shooter game that you can plop down and not interact with any other real live people.
While it was hard to read all of that, I have to agree with what he meant. Much like most of you, I've played this game for almost two decades now, and I've put a lot of my heart and soul in to it. I've made a lot of friends and enemies in this game. Some of those enemies stalk me to this day on the forums (you know who you are). In the end, after all the dominoes have fallen, you have to keep in mind that this is a game. It isn't reality. It never will be. While I cherish the friendships I have made BECAUSE of the game, I also have come to the realization that a lot of times, my personal desires for play time and what I want to accomplish do not always match up with my in-game friends. I've bent a lot in the past to try to accompany what my "friends" want or need in the game. It has lead to a lot of good times AND really boring "I wish I was doing something else" times as well. Recently, I found myself raiding way, way more than I wanted to at this point in life. I was literally putting my real life on hold to try to make people happy in the game. I was not enjoying the game at that point because it felt more like a job than a game, but I kept doing it because I didn't want to upset anyone. Until... I eventually snapped during the Thanksgiving holidays. I decided I had, had enough of doing what everybody else wanted, and I took my life back. And... I lost friends... in game friends. Literally, people that I called my friends, and talked to on a daily basis in voice chat, completely disowned me because I stopped playing the game the way they wanted. My "friends" defriended me on Facebook, and left the Discord server we communicated on (outside of our guild's Discord server). After not logging in much for a couple weeks, I logged in one day to find that I had been removed from my guild even just because I wasn't raiding.... that's friendship there isn't it. So, yeah. Keep in mind that these "friends" you have in game are for the most part dependent upon the game. Take that game out of the picture, and you will find out just how many of them truly are your friends and how many were just acquaintances. Long story short, the only real friend I play EverQuest (or any MMORPG) with anymore is my brother. All others will be nothing more than acquaintances going forward because I know that to them, I am just some really good AI-based NPC they interact with in a game... until they turn off the game. They aren't your friends. So... yes. I support being able to play the game to the fullest extent with out relying on anybody else. Yes. I support boxing. Yes. I support mercenaries. Do I think this game will ever go fully in that direction? No.
.I said many times, it would be so easy : make tier one zones pretty easy for all kind of players .. tier 2 to be harder. and tier 3 to be even much harder, so everyone could play there and more $$ for DB. entry zone in TBL ( and so many small island , and few mobs in it with pretty long repops ( compared to frontier mountain ) and all the ae's going around and all other zones locked behind the trial suck.
I think it is fine that this expansion has little for you to the moment. For everyone that feels similarly: don’t worry. This expansion will be here when you are ready. Maybe you will buy it at a discount or get it with another expansion purchase. Whatever the case, there is plenty of opportunity for nearly all EQ players to complete this content at some point and I expect most players will want to for some time because the rewards are quite good. Moreover, this expansion certainly has some challenging tasks, but none of it is nearly as hard as people are making it out to be. Every instance of “difficulty” I’ve run into (including issues I’ve had and accomplishing tasks others have told me we’re hard) was due to either sloppy playing, bad strategy, carelessness, or misunderstanding of task objectives/rules.
What puzzles me is that the smoke trials that everyone has to do to just get thought to the next zone are some of the hardest content, while some of the quests/missions in the later zones are much easier. Shoudn't it be the reverse?
I completed all the Smoke trials last night with a group that wanted to get all the Smoke merc tasks out of the way. I had completed the trial of three preiviousely, which was tricky to figure out initially, but once executed properly was simple and satisfying. The group was debating which trials to start with and discussing the various levels of difficulty involved in each trial. After all was said and done, I don’t think anything was remotely diffucult at all. Some were slow, if anything, but I thought the some of the EoK and much of the RoS stuff was much harder at launch. The platform one was very easy. I was told to try using rocket boots, which I owned but had never used. My group tried to over complicate things and in the end it was a slow yet painless cakewalk. I used my rocket boots for the first time in ages and had no problems, but it certainly isn’t necessary. The bouncy puzzle maze took a bit of learning, but nothing saw invis and the bosses weren’t hard. This could be done in a matter of minutes if your group got good at it. The volcano island one was trivial. It was he fastest by far. I used a hotkey someone posted in the other thread without even knowing if it was for this encounter because it just sounded like it was from the description of the event. The twisty one where you go up and down the spiral was slow but painless. This one depends on group makeup, I guess. If what’s to come is EASIER, it is hard for me to imagine. Edit: just to add, I thought the Merc tasks were arguably harder than the trials. If there I have one complaint it is that the pathing in TBL is bonkers. Additionally, while clearing we came across a named that was pretty tough. A horse in the bouncy area. It opened with darkness and some massive AE, but our healer was up to the challenge and we took it down.
Wow, I was checking to see if this new expansion was any good. I haven't played EQ in awhile, but log in once and awhile. I started playing 2 months after it first started. I was thinking about maybe coming back and playing some of my accounts, but doesn't sound like there is anything worth coming back for i the expansion. The whole locked zoned thing, is so incredibly stupid. I mainly box or solo, so getting flagged for zones is not easy or impossible most times. I think most people, at this point are in the same boat. I can see one raid zone being flagged, but all of them?? No thanks, I want to enjoy my toy when I buy it, not try to get it out of the box. Can't be enough people playing, to alienate so many, really bad idea.
